> The organization of a high tech economy is the bipolar shift
> toward the highly skilled and the minimally skilled at the
> expense of the middle.
This is, however, VERY MUCH a product of social, cutltural, political and economic forces that have nothing to do with high tech per se.
The internet itself is proof of how high-tech CAN be a levelling force.
Email is simplicity itself. HTML is a relatively simply programming languae, and programs to automate Webpage creation are almost as easy to use as doing it yourself from scratch. It's taking an AWFUL lot of capital investment to reshape cybersapce into a sharply hierarchical domain.
IMHO, the long-term consequences of the high-tech revolution we're going through are still very much up for grabs. The technology itself is HIGHLY plastic, and can be as easily shaped into broadly inclusive directions as into narrowly exclusive ones.
> It is the nature of a high tech economy that retraining of
> skill generally means a down grading of skills, because high
> tech skills are more efficiently embeddable in more receptive
> youthful minds.
Oldsters entering new fields at midlife are VERY likely to outperform youngsters. They are far LESS likely to work long hours at lousy pay. Unionization would have an ENOURMOUS impact on the supposedly "technological logic" at work.
> The are two immediate impacts of these trends. The first is the financial
> impact of a shift in income pattern toward a shrinking high income group and a
> growing low income group. The second is the social impact of declining job
> satisfaction and personal esteem.
Both due to POLITICAL economy, same as it ever was, NOT to high tech per se.
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"